A while ago I went to a lecture on AI. At the end, the speaker asked if anyone had questions.
I froze. I wanted to understand more, but I couldn’t work out what to ask. I wanted something from him — I just didn’t know what. My mind spun in place until he packed up and left the room.
One question stayed with me for a long time after: why can’t I ask a good question?
Maybe it has to do with how I was educated. In most Asian classrooms, the teacher is above and the student is below. Asking a question reads as a challenge. Other students see you as either slow or showing off. I once asked something in class, and a friend came up to me afterward and told me I was trying too hard.
I thought about that for a while. Asking cost me something socially. So I stopped thinking about how to ask — somewhere along the way my brain had decided it wasn’t the right thing to do. There was something more important to do instead: solve the problem in front of me.
Then AI arrived, faster than anyone expected. It solves problems better than most people now.
At work we’ve started using it to write code. The output is impressive. It also sent a chill down my back. It’s already better than I am, and I’m not going to catch up.
That was when I started to think the skill I spent my childhood building — solving problems — matters less every year. What might matter instead is knowing how to ask a good question.
And that conclusion scared me more, because I’m not good at this. I can’t even describe what being good at it would look like. It feels like standing in the middle of an ocean with no idea where I am or which way to go.
So: I don’t know how to ask questions yet. The only thing left is to go looking for them.
In kendo class, once a week on my day off. In the flat routine of the workday. In books outside my usual range. Watch, experience, and write down whatever makes me stop.
I don’t know if this works. But once the sample gets big enough, I should be able to look back at my own questions and tell which ones were good and which weren’t — and maybe from there, work out how to ask the kind that gets a real answer.